Sylvie nods at Chris. “Are you planning to leave her in there for eighteen hours?”

Moose’s eyes are glued to the pink carrier like he’s waiting for his next meal to step out of it. His jaws are big enough to wrap around Chris’s entire body. He could snap her neck with one shake of his giant head.

“How can I get you to write nice things in your article if my dog kills your ancient cat?” Sylvie asks.

“She’s not that old.”

Sylvie’s eyebrows rise a fraction. “It’ll be okay. Promise. Let her out.”

The train lurches. We roll out of the station. There’s not much choice, so I unzip the carrier. Chris climbs out, pads across the table, sits in front of the window, watches the buildings slide by. Moose silently puts two paws on the floor.

“Did you really get her as a kitten?”

I don’t take my eyes off Cujo. “Yeah. But from a local shelter.”

“You lied to me about your cat, too? Where’s your journalistic integrity?”

I grunt. If she’s trying to compare a lie about the provenance of my cat to bilking money from people who can’t afford to lose it, clearly I’m on the right side of the line.

Moose now has four feet on the floor. “Call him back.” Sylvie ignores me. Moose creeps forward. Chris spins like she has eyes in the back of her head, one paw raised to strike. My mother had her declawed as a kitten. Maybe that’s why the dog doesn’t blink. I prepare to get mauled. Moose edges nearer until their noses almost touch then backs away like he and Christopher Robin have reached a silent agreement. Chris walks to the far side of the table, the sharp bones of her hips painfully visible, and drops onto Sylvie’s lap, curls into a ball. I let out the breath I’ve been holding.

“You okay?” Sylvie asks with a little smile.

“I’m fine.”

She runs light fingers along Chris’s bony back and my cat, typically dismissive of strangers, actually purrs.

“Animals like me,” Sylvie says. “So I can’t be that bad, right?”

I push record on my phone. “Tell me about your childhood . . .”

TEN

Sylvie

I don’t have much of a plan yet. Right now I just need to get a bead on this guy. He blushed a little when I asked if he was going to share my room. Buried under the surface are manners—probably raised by a single mother. And he loves his cat so much that he’s in denial about her life expectancy. When I run my hand down his cat’s side, I can feel how old age has thinned her fur and the jutting of her fragile ribs. Gently, I tickle beneath Chris’s chin and she purrs louder. A lump lodges in my throat. She’s holding on for him.

When I was a little kid, the idea of loving an old pet was alien. Puppies were everything—wiggly, uncoordinated, the epitome of cute. Then my first dog’s face sugared, his back end stiffened, and I loved him so much, my heart shattered when we found him dead beneath our porch. For months the fact that he’d been alone when he died, without my arms around him, haunted me.